Marsha Hunt - Like Venus Fading

She’d come back late with fanciful talk about some radio programme that Toguri had had her listening to which was of no interest to us. Her manner grew so stiff and detached that she thanked us for everything from scrubbing floors to making her sweet tea. ‘Good evening, girls,’ she’d say in a slight daze. Like a walking zombie she was some nights, but what could we say? Little girls weren’t bold and never speaking until spoken to was a virtue. I thought the world was for grown-ups and knowing that people were out panhandling made my generation obedient. But Hollywood has always been wild and for all I know, Mother could have been at Meyerdorf’s smoking opium every day. I’ve lived long enough to know that kids never know what’s really going on, because more often than not, people make a point of not telling them.

Mother had described Toguri to us as handsome but on the only occasion when Lilian and I met him, I took more notice of his graceful, birdlike movements than his face. He flitted across the carpeted floors, his feet in black slippers, never making a sound.

He greeted us at the front door, giving a slight bow as though we were Meyerdorf’s guests. Mother had already lectured us so long and hard that I was afraid to breathe. Tying the ribbons in my hair, she’d said, ‘Don’t touch nothing, don’t sit on nothing, and don’t dare take nothing to eat.’

I imagined that I looked beautiful because I was wearing Lilian’s communion dress, but the moment we entered Meyerdorf’s hallway, I was faced with a full-length mirror, and the truth stared back at me. An enormous red ribbon flopped over my brow and that dress hung on me like a teepee. My legs were pretzel sticks and I nearly cried because I felt so betrayed by my image.

Owning a pair of tap shoes, having a mother who worked for a rich man, having known a woman who was a friend of Charlie Chaplin’s, having been praised for my Bible recitations, I was a child with delusions and to discover that I looked like a little brown clown wounded my pride. But Lil and I sang for Toguri that afternoon anyway. Our a cappella harmonies were improved by the echo in the courtyard. ‘These two are better than the Cochrane Twins on Children’s Hour

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